If you dream of becoming a writer, you have to eventually sit down and write. Whether you’re doing National Novel Writing Month in November, or you dream of being a writer “someday,” the first inescapable step is making the time to do it. Here’s a 15-minute exercise toward that end that you can do today.

It’s Tuesday around 11 a.m. and you’ve just about had it. There’s a pile of paperwork on your desk, 10 emails you need to respond to and a Slack message or two from your boss wondering when she can expect an updated draft of your project proposal. Never mind that you need to remember to stop at the grocery store on…

There are many ways for a good boss to go bad, and one of those ways is a boss who doesn’t realize their own insane pace can’t be matched by their employees. There is hope, however, that you can reset boundaries.

There’s a hundred things to keep track of in a typical work day, and even more to get done. And trying to accomplish everything at once typically means you’re less productive than you’d like to be. You can’t, for example, listen to and comprehend your coworker’s presentation while writing an email to your boss about a…

You may want to spend less time of sites like Facebook and YouTube, but actually doing it can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. HabitLab is an open-source project from Stanford that attempts to make cutting back on habit-forming sites a little bit easier.

If you’ve used birth control pills for any length of time, you may have been told to take it at the exact same time every day to ensure effectiveness. Maintaining a consistent pill schedule at home is as easy as setting an alarm on your phone—but what happens when you travel across several time zones?

This week we have a guy who desperately wants to escape his soulless career and become a writer, but he’s too busy to write. Should he leave his job so he can finally find the time to put pen to paper? Or will he realize that it’s possible to make time for his passion if he’s willing to dig deep?

It’s good to have a schedule planned out each week, but having too many appointments set for each day might be be more harmful than helpful. A recent study suggests the more self-imposed deadlines we have in a day, the less deep work we can get done.

When you realize you need to get something done, you probably think to yourself, “I have to do that soon.” But that type of thinking disrupts your motivation in two ways: by messing with your sense of time and robbing you of urgency.

I have a bad to-do habit. I make big ambitious lists of things I want to do, then let them pile up in my to-do app until I’m so scared that I quit the app and start a new one. (I, like several Lifehacker commenters, don’t know how I got a job at a productivity site.) But I’ve found a way out of my to-do debt.

There’s a lot to do. There always is. You sit at your desk well past quittin’ time each day to ensure it gets all done, but in the end you suffer for it. It’s okay to leave work on time, and these tips can help you make it a habit.

Setting an alert on your iOS device or Mac computer can be done in a variety of ways. You can ask Siri, use your Clock app, set up a reminder, or make an alarm. Unfortunately, these all come with a few caveats that may leave you confused as to why your phone is buzzing at 3am—or end up with you rushing out the door…